Tyger, tyger, burning bright...

...in the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

About here is where the photo would go of the finished top of the challenge quilt if I had a photo to show you ... so you'll have to make do with words.. pffft
So... I've mentioned previously that the theme was "Golden dreaming" ... fairly obvious given that the group is the Goldfields Quilters ... so ... gold rush, treasure, chests, Croesus, Golden Fleece [ Australia riding on the sheep's back even?]
At one point, I thought seriously about doing an extreme closeup of the gorgeous, sinuous curves in the flowers of the golden Honey Grevillea : some serious beading and embroidery for the sticky hairs ... actually, that still appeals [ note to self: file away under 'think about doing this sometime']
and then:
Oakley was having a nap one afternoon, and I had an epiphany of sorts. What could a large, golden, ginger cat who firmly believes that he is panthera leo possibly be dreaming about? I figure it would have to be a jungle, right? So out came all the jungle-ish fabrics... of which there were many thanks to Nadie's intention [ never realised ] of making the ex BF a tiger quilt. Oakley is more your leonine type but they live in savannah so this jungle was going to have tigers. Added to the pile were all the bali batiks and hand dyes in yellow/orange/khaki/olive/brown colours. This isn't my usual palette. Greens yes but usually gumleaf blue greens. Still there was a suprising amount there to audition ... and working out of one's preferred palette is a challenge all by itself.
What I was thinking about at this stage was a photo-tranferred image of Oakley perhaps in a bottom corner and then segueing into a jungle for him to dream of. Probably some of the prints with jungle animals would have been incorporated in the background.

All of that changed with the rediscovery of a piece culled from Op Shop [ thrift store] shorts and gifted to me by my friend Pam Beekman ... one leg to be precise. Huge, beautifully drawn, yellow/orange faces of tiger and panther peering out from behind detailed green foliage and in truly bizarre fashion, whover had cut out the fabric for the shorts had cut it so the faces and foliage ran sideways. Maybe that's why it was at the Op Shop!
They make such a strong statement and are drawn in such a specific graphic style that the other animal prints would have undermined rather than supported, so out they went.
So... the emphasis shifted to building the big cats a habitat! The palette goes from really dark browns through a dark-to-medium assortment of yellowed greens and into orange/yellows and ochres.
Most of the top is constructed of Anjii's Angles blocks [ link in sidebar ] and the first two lines of the quote from William Blake stencilled onto two of the borders in antique gold Shiva paintstick. It currently measures a bit over a metre. There's no actual image of the ginger cat that started this train of thought but that explanation can go on the label on the back.
It has been duly airdried and cured for 4-5 days and has been ironed this morning and the borders pieced on. Just as well I was cautious this time with the Shiva and covered it with baking paper before I ironed it... some of the gold print still tranferred ... enough to have totally messed it up had it not been covered with the paper.
Next job will be to baste it and then decide whether I'm going to quilt it in green/brown variagated which I don't actually have and will need to drive to Bendigo for, or black.
Will ponder the problem for a while ... and you see ... if I could post you a photo or three then I wouldn't be pondering in isolation... muttermuttermutter

and just btw if I see ONE MORE person refer to something as being 'addicting' I'm going to scream . Now hear this people... there is NO SUCH WORD ... it is addictive ... got that ? A-D-D-I-C-T-I-V-E. You may now go about your business.